It Wasn’t the Mouse

Best Buys was packed–it was a Saturday, eight days before Christmas. I parked in a far corner and joined the throng. Somehow, I found the mouses (mice?) without help. Most of them were many colors–greens, pinks, reds–but I wanted plain black. There was one.

I had expected to find “directions” on the packaging–I wanted to know I could use the damn thing when I got it home. There were words and symbols, none of which provided any reassurance. The words were in English and French and Spanish and Portuguese, and the symbols were meaningless. A young lady, maybe 18 years old, sidled up to me. “Can I help you?” she said.

“How does this thing work?”

She was puzzled for a moment. “It just–works. You push the stick into the port and off you go.”

Sticks and ports were barely in my computer vocabulary. “Everything I need is in this package?”

“Yes, sir.”

I couldn’t think of anything else to ask, so I paid for it and left. All the way home I chastised myself for not getting her to provide more detail. After opening the package, I searched in vain for the stick that was supposed to be there. There were no words to help me, only more pictures that communicated nothing. About to give up, I pressed something that opened the mouse and there it was.

Almost giddy, I pushed the stick into a port and rebooted the computer and, lo and behold, it did work. I went happily back to my manuscript and, ten minutes later, the 0s began again. Almost weeping, I consulted the Internet once more with the assistance of my new wireless mouse. One of the posts (three pages in) seemed relatively simple so I decided to try it. It involved unchecking boxes in the control panel, a ten-second task that took me ten minutes.

I pulled up the manuscript again and the 0s began immediately. About to heave the whole thing out the window, I remembered I had not rebooted again. Et voila. No more 0s. So far.